I'm a drummer who owns a guitar which I do not play well. This blog is a chronical of my guitar playing experience with Rocksmith.
I mostly play a Michael Kelly Valor II with coil-split humbuckers and a Fender MIM Telecaster (and a few others). I play on XBox 360/Live using a wireless transmitter. My kids play, too (Fender Squier Strat and Washburn/Lyon LG115) and I'll cover some of their Rocksmith experiences if they can ever stay un-grounded long enough to use the XBox.

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Easiest Rocksmith Songs - Updated! With New DLC

[This post was written in March of 2013, prior to the release of Rocksmith 2014, so it only covers songs available up to that date. The songs ranked in this post are still available as DLC or can be downloaded from the original Rocksmith game.

I am working on an updated post on this subject now, but due to some changes in Rocksmith 2014 I'll have to update my "difficulty" calculations.]

About this time last year I posted a highly unscientific ranking of Rocksmith songs from easiest to hardest. Since then Ubisoft has put out a TON of new DLC and I've bought a lot (but not all) of it. My original list seemed to be very popular, so it's time for an update with new DLC included.

Where the original rankings changed since last year, I've noted the original ranking. Chord arrangements are still shown in italics. (** = Songs that I've Mastered)

Easy: (Easiness Scores of 80 and up, starting with Easiest Songs and Going Up in Difficulty)

OK, obviously there's something missing from my calculation, but I admitted this from the start. There's no way Hit Me with Your Best Shot is the hardest song on RS. It's not even the hardest song for me on RS. The Star Spangled Banner isn't all that difficult (so far), either. I suspect one of the flaws in my calculation is that mastery levels affect a lot. Sometimes it's easier to play some songs when you level them up. Sometimes not. But, I still think as a general relative indicator, this sort of works. Just ignore obvious flukes in the ranking (like Hit Me with Your Best Shot).

How I Did It
Basically, I divided my highest score on each song by the number of times I've played the song. Then I multiplied that result by the my best accuracy percentage. Finally, I multiplied the whole mess by the amount of my longest note streak. To make the numbers more digestable, I divided by 100,000 and rounded to one decimal place. The higher the value, the easier the song.

Score = ((HS/PC) x %max x NSmax)/100,000

I have this formula loaded into a spreadsheet where all my high scores, high note streaks, and max accuracies are summarized from the individual spreadsheets I keep for each song.

Note: I had to restart my journey last Fall, so the Play Count used on this new ranking is not a true indicator. I have played many of these songs many more times than what is reflected in these calculations. You'd expect these songs to rank easier this time around, but they don't. A few songs "appear" easier, but note that five songs which were ranked "easy" last year are now ranked "medium."

Songs That Aren't Included
Like before, I've only ranked the songs I've actually played. (Duh.) There are several songs and alternate arrangements of songs in the original RS song list as well as a bunch of DLC which are not included here because I still haven't played every arrangement of every song. Also, there's a lot of DLC that I just don't like and have never bought.

I also omitted alternate arrangements of some songs when the arrangements are very similar. For example, on songs like Angela and Surf Hell once you learn the combo arrangement you pretty much know the single note arrangement and vice versa. No point ranking both.

Originally I left out a few songs that I have played a lot for fun. Surf Hell and God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen fall into this category. Since I had to restart my whole journey last September, the high play counts on those songs aren't high anymore. The rating is still a little skewed because I obviously levelled these songs up easier than before, but I'm including them this time. (See above.)

Chord Arrangements
Chords are generally easy for me, but my equation doesn't take that into account. If you aren't comfortable with chords, just ignore the chord arrangements in this ranking and look at the rest of the list. Chord Arrangements are identified by italics.